★★★★★ To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is a very funny book
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is a very funny book
Is there anything left to say about Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird that hasn't been said thousands of times? There is! Judging by a quick survey of reviews on Goodreads, almost no one remarks how funny To Kill a Mockingbird is. I even did a text search! (Now, to be strictly accurate, it is possible that that HAS actually been said thousands of times. There have probably been millions of opinions expressed about Mockingbird, and if 0.1% of them say it is funny, that would be thousands.)
If you are surprised to hear this, you cannot be more surprised than I was to discover it. I read Mockingbird for the first time as a high school student. (It was not assigned reading -- I had a list of "classics" that every college-bound high-schooler should read, and I worked my way through it.) I expected a heavy, depressing examination of race relations in the Southern USA. It is that, in part, but actually, that is really only a small part of Mockingbird. What it is, mainly, is a very good novel, about a girl growing up motherless in a small Southern town. It is told in the first person by this girl, whose full name Jean Louise Finch, is almost never used -- she is known throughout as Scout.
Scout starts school in chapter 2, and her description of her first days at school had me literally laughing out loud. In fact, if I remember correctly, I laughed so hard that I had trouble breathing -- I was literally ROFL -- Rolling On the Floor Laughing. One of Scout's many problems is that she enters school already able to read, having learned by sitting in her father's lap and following along as he read aloud to her. To her teacher, this is something like insubordination.
Her father, whom she calls "Atticus", is the lawyer Atticus Finch, and Scout's relationship with him is the heart of the novel. There are endless arguments (especially following the publication of Go Set a Watchman) about whether Atticus Finch is a good man. I won't weigh in on that. He is certainly a good father and a hero to his children, and since he is seen in Mockingbird through Scout's eyes, he is presented as a good man.
I give Mockingbird a five-star rating not because of its debatable value as social commentary, but because it is one of the best novels I have ever read.